Parade Magazine: "I Can’t Believe I’ll Be Home for Christmas"

By David Oliver Relin
Published: December 24, 2006

In her 89 years, Lillie Sams has weathered more hurricanes than she can count. Her sturdy brick house in rural Hancock County, Miss., stood on high ground. Likewise, Lillie was a rock for the 300 foster children she took in over the years. But when the 34-foot wall of water from Hurricane Katrina surged over her hometown of Pearlington, Lillie had to run for her life. “The water was up to your neck before you could shout for help,” she says.

With relatives, Lillie fled in a rowboat to the Greater Mt. Zion Church, where her late husband had been pastor. Swimming to the top of the pulpit and punching a hole through the ceiling, Lillie’s family took sanctuary in the attic while 125 mph winds tore the roof apart. Surviving was hard, Lillie says. But life after Katrina was harder: Lillie’s nephew Roland Watts drowned nearby. And Lillie’s home was gutted. Only three of Pearlington’s 850 houses were habitable once the waters receded. “We had nothing left,” Lillie says. “Nothing at all.”

Hancock County was a diverse collection of picturesque waterfront towns. But when Katrina passed over it, the storm surge rushed 10 miles inland and killed 58 people. Across the county, 80% of the buildings were severely damaged. When Ray and Donna Green returned from the shelter where they rode out the storm with their three daughters, they found their house ripped from its foundation and so damaged it had to be torn down to the studs. Like many, the Greens had no flood insurance, because they live far inland from the Gulf. So the family moved into a FEMA trailer. The crowding has been stressful. Donna was hospitalized for heart trouble, and Ray suffered a minor stroke while trying to rebuild their house. “Sometimes you have to go out and scream at a tree,” Donna says. “But you feel guilty crying about your own life when so many people here are suffering.”

Some 1,250 miles to the north, Bill Eastburn, 74, a lawyer from Bucks County, Pa., was haunted by the suffering of the storm’s victims, like so many other Americans. “A few days after Katrina, I was having trouble sleeping when I thought, ‘The federal government is botching the job, and there’s got to be a better way,’” he says. “I decided an affluent community like mine should reach out directly to a devastated community.”